“Sure there is.” But Badger presently shook his head. “Not to-night, Jerry,” said he decisively. “We already have enough on for to-night with this infernal detective. Besides, I’m about all in, with what I’ve had to do to-day.” “I don’t much wonder,” grinned Conley. “We’ll cut out the hold-up until to-morrow,” added Badger. “You go over to the house and tell Vic that Carter has revived. She wants to come out and see him. Meantime, I’ll take the lantern, and go and have a talk with him.” “What’s the matter with lighting this wall lamp?” “No harm in it, Jerry. Light it, if you like.” Badger took up the lantern while speaking, and strode into the interior basement, closing the sliding door after him. Conley struck a match and lighted an oil-lamp in a bracket on the wall, then hastened out of doors and across the lawn. “Now is my time!” thought Patsy. “If I can get into that inner cellar, and down Amos Badger, the rest will be dead easy!” He raised his head a little to lift the lid of the hamper. Then he suddenly stopped, holding his breath. The patter of soft feet on the ground near-by had reached his ears. Then came a furious sniffing about the wickerwork of the hamper. It was followed immediately by a long, low, threatening growl, enough to have sent a chill through a brass image. “That infernal bloodhound again!” thought Patsy, with an ugly creeping of his every nerve. “By thunder! this is worse than being headed off by a man—or by half a dozen men! What’s the cursed brute about to do?” CHAPTER XVII. A CRISIS. The bloodhound continued to sniff and growl. Patsy continued to lie low and hold his breath. He knew that if he showed himself in the open there would be trouble from that moment—and the worst kind of trouble. He hoped that the fierce brute would presently have satisfied his curiosity, and then take it into his ugly head to return out of doors. But the dog did nothing of the kind. Plainly enough, he knew that there was something wrong, and his watch-dog instinct impelled him to hang about the suspected spot. He fell to trotting to and fro near the back of the touring-car, over a space of some six feet, like an irritated lion in a cage. With every turn he made he looked up at the hamper with his rolling red eyes, and indulged in a low, threatening growl. It was as much as to say: “Don’t come out, or I’ll make a meal of you!” His huge jaws hung apart and were froth-flecked, and Patsy, venturing once to peer out at him, did not like his looks. “He’d make mince-meat of me in less than ten seconds if I undertook to leap out there,” he said to himself, with gruesome misgivings. “Yet if I remain here and he there, I am as good as discovered by these crooks. I’m blessed if this hasn’t developed into a mighty ugly situation.” As a matter of fact, he could see no immediate way out of it.